Week 5 Sphere pressing on a plate
Objective :
To perform the simulation of the given wire bending and obtaining the desired results of stresses and strains as required.
Procedure :
Setting up the simulation
To set up the simulation, first we need to import all the required material cards such as Structural Steel NL and Structural Steel is assigned to the sphere.
The below materials can be found in the General non-linear materials library.
Importing geometry :
Next we import the geometry which has been provided. Rename the components to Sphere and Plate respectively.
Material defintion :
The material Structural Steel NL is assigned to the plate and Structural Steel is assigned to the sphere.
Symmetry : Next we will apply symmetry to the sphere and plate to simulate the simulation such that it behaves like a complete sphere and plate.
Contacts : To set up the contact we go to connections-->contacts and open the contact card.
We will create 1 contact,
1)Between Sphere and Plate
Type = frictional
Coefficient of friction = 0.74
Formulation = Program controlled
Interface treatment = Add Offset, no ramping
Next we mesh the components.
A default mesh is applied to the geometry.
Analysis Settings :
Next we go to analysis settings to set up the kinematics of the simulation.
The analysis is run for 4 steps using the following conditions. All the steps are chosen and the following criteria are entered as shown below.
Supports : Next we create fixed supports to keep the wire bending apparatus in place while bending the wire.
The lower side of the plate is made fixed as shown above.
Displacement :
A displacement is provided to the top face of the sphere so that it travels to a depth of 4mm into the surface of the plate.
Output Parameters : The following parameters are selected for output from the simulation.
The total deformation, directional deformation of the plate in y-axis, and equivalent stress of all bodies are selected for output.
Running the simulation :
Next we run the simulation. The simulation takes about 2 seconds to run as we can see from the runtime below.
Post-processing :
Equivalent stress :
A maximum stress of 8887.8 Mpa is obtained in the plate as can be seen above.
Directional deformation :
The peak directional deformation in the y-axis is obtained of 0.32 mm.
Total plastic deformation : 
A total plastic deformation of 3.46 mm is obtained in the plate as shown above.
Conclusion :
Hence the sphere plate pressing simulation has been performed successfully and the desired output has been obtained.
Result : The file can be accessed at the link given below :
Sphere_pressPlate